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The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe is embarking on a novel business partnership with a pharmaceutical company. The company pays the tribe to hold the patents for a profitable drug. In exchange, the tribe’s sovereign immunity prevents generic drug makers from getting at the drug’s formula. Some members of Congress are now drafting laws to prevent such agreements. The tribe is also suing business giants Microsoft and Amazon for patent infringement. It’s one of several instances in which tribes leverage sovereignty in business deals. Is this a new and innovative revenue-generating model? Or is the idea headed for a legal defeat? We’ll try and sort out the prospects.
Guests:
Elizabeth Winston – professor of law at The Catholic University of America at the Columbus School of Law
Matthew Compton – attorney at Prebeg, Faucett & Abbott PLLC
David Petite (Fond du Lac Chippewa Tribe) – inventor and founder of Native American Intellectual Property Enterprise Council
Break Music: Fancy Shawl Song (song) BlackStone (artist) Bring Your Feathers In! (album)
Native Sovereignty will always challenged.
I am a proud card carrying American Indian who happens to be a professional inventor that has over 100 patents. The first thing tribes need to do is learn to spell IP and then start understanding how patents work. Monetizing patents is a very complex business that has grey legal matter around it. What the Mohawks have done is a good thing, how they did it could be questioned.. Historically Native Country has never fully understood the concept of ownership of Intellectual Property. Thus the lack of understanding has been catastrophic to the tribes that continue to cause never ending damage to our tribe and our culture. When is the last time you ever saw Coca Cola allow a moving company to put its name on the side of trucks? When is the last time you saw a car name after the brand name Microsoft? You want. Because those brand names alone are worth Billions of dollars and in some cases the trademark or copyright brand is worth more than the company generates. Tribes as a culture today have to realize its not about just the United States its dealing with a global footprint because technology has made our world smaller and more integrated. The internet as accelerated our world becoming smaller and has changed the rules on we must adapt to control our cultural heritage beyond the US borders and patents and trademarks and copyrights will need to be in our way to identify and control who we are now and in the future.
I am not an attorney. But this deal scares me because if the Mohawk Tribe loses any future court case where they use their sovereign rights as a defense it may open legalities that lose all tribes their sovereign rights. It is too big a gamble to lose. The odds always go to the house, who’s house are we playing in on this?